It’s not just that the structure of option grants has worsened (also, expiration practices still are pretty bad for employees), but also that the valuation of the option grants is often way too low.<p>If, as in the article, a start-up is effectively offering a low salary + a lottery ticket and expecting candidates to see it as at least equally as valuable as a high total comp figure from a competitor, then the lottery ticket has to be priced very highly, to drag up the expected value after accounting for all the high likelihood outcomes that have poor payoffs.<p>Add to this the fact that, despite false promises, you won’t get more freedom, career opportunities, cutting edge work, etc., at most start-ups than you would at even average-case public companies, and it’s a bleak picture. No aspects of the work experience will create additional forms of “payoff” that help offset the low salary and poor lottery ticket equity, and in many cases the work environment will be toxic, full of immature behavior, unprofessional, etc., and candidates should really be requiring <i>higher</i> compensation than at a big company, to deal with the start-up dysfunction.<p>When the option valuation (even assuming a hilariously unlikely high value exit or IPO) is eventually diluted and spread out across ~10 years that you have to delay getting that money you earned (or even lose it all because of a layoff + poor expiration policy), and at best it turns out to be the annualized equivalent of a pretty modest bonus, it’s just deeply not worth it.<p>You will not have gotten anything else out of it (specialized experience, leadership or business skills, networking, oddball perks) that offsets the income you could have been earning almost anywhere else.